Though she passed away many years ago, I still think of her every May 1st. I also always listen on this day, alone somewhere, this time in Las Vegas, to this song.
The sound isn't great, but the music is. The song devastates me every time.
I miss Mom. I miss Ed. I miss Zevon. I miss so many people I've lost.
I do keep them in my heart, and I plan to always do so.
Now, back to not blogging until I finish that oh so late book.
She would have been 84 today, and I would have called her to say, "Happy Birthday." It would have been another call on another day, because for the last few years of her life, I called her every day that I was in town. I would have had little to say to her, but we would have spent ten minutes on the phone, and I would have ended by saying, "I love you, Mom," something I spent over forty years not saying. I would have mocked the call a bit, shrugged it off as a duty, and even truly felt that way some of the time.
Had I known she was going to die, I like to think I would have appreciated those calls more, but instead I would probably have spent all my energy trying to stop her death and still not truly enjoyed the short talks we had.
Cling tight to the ones you love, folks, and appreciate them, and revel in how much they are so perfectly themselves, and see the parts of them you've never been open to seeing before, because all too soon we or they will be gone, all gone, and you will not get those moments again.
I've said before that I never danced with my mom, and to the best of my knowledge I haven't, but this Delta Rae song now always reminds me of her.
Yesterday marked the five-year anniversary of my mother's death. I don't do anything to celebrate the day, but I inevitably note it, of course. She was the only person who was a parent to me, and I miss her very much.
Over the years since she died, I've come to have more and more respect for what she managed to do. Through a string of bad men--those prior to Ed and Lloyd, both of whom were (and in Lloyd's case still is) good men--and in the face of all sorts of incredible life difficulties, she never wavered from her commitment to her three children. She did the job life gave her. She worked her butt off to put food on our table and pay for the roof over our heads. I never once heard her gripe about how hard it was to be a single mom. (I'm sure she must have talked about it to friends, but not to us.)
She made a ton of mistakes, but she never stopped taking care of us.
She also imbued me with beliefs that I cherish to this day. She taught me that in this country if you were smart and worked hard, you could make something of yourself, build for yourself and those you love a bright future. I've since come to believe that this dream does not apply equally to all of our citizens, and that angers me more than I can say, but belief in it helped me survive a lot of hard times.
She also convinced me that she always believed in me, and that helped me believe in myself in times when I had trouble doing so.
She taught me the value of loyalty and of protecting those who were with you. I hold to those values to this day.
She showed me earlier than most kids the joys of reading and of listening to music and looking at paintings, though we didn't have much in the way of the latter.
Most of all, she taught me by her example that you do the job life gives you, that you never abandon those you care about and who depend on you, that no matter what weight threatens to push you into the very dirt beneath you, you push aside that weight, get up, and get on with it. She was a small woman, never a full five feet tall in all the time I can remember her, but when life pushed too hard I got glimpses of the absolute fucking steel that infused her bones and her soul, because she never gave up, never stopped doing her job, never stopped fighting.
Once, after a chemo crash during the treatment of her third cancer, on the phone with me, she came close. She begged me to tell her it was okay for her to give up, that it was okay for her to die. She pleaded with a hoarse, tear-filled voice for me to tell her she could die. She said she could no longer take the horrible pain, that nothing the doctors were giving her was helping, and she wanted to die. She wanted me to tell her it was okay for her to stop fighting and to die. I was flat on my back and on painkillers, having hurt my back. I never so much wanted to give up--and to tell her it was okay to give up.
I didn't. Against her entreaties, I asked her to give me twenty-four hours, to fight for one day more. I told her that I was absolutely positive--a complete lie--that in that day the pain would subside and she would feel better. I told her she had beaten everything else life had smacked her with, and she wasn't going to stop now. I told her she could do twenty-four more hours of anything, that she was just that strong, and that she had to do it.
"Just twenty-four hours," she said, her voice a whisper.
"Yes," I said, making my voice stronger than my belief in what I was doing.
"Okay," she said. "Okay."
She kept fighting, and the pain indeed subsided. On the day she died, about five years later, the doctors declared her free and clear of the cancer.
I hope every day to be as strong as my mother and worthy of her legacy.
I love you, Mom.
Not that long ago, I was at a party, chatting with a group of folks, and the subject of our mothers came up. I mentioned that mine had died some years back and that periodically I was still sad at the loss. A therapist in the group offered to prescribe something that would help me stop feeling sad.
I hadn't said I was depressed, much less clinically depressed. I'd said I was sad.
Since when did being sad become a bad thing?
Some sadness is, to me, entirely appropriate. Feeling sad at the loss of my mother is, to me, part and parcel of honoring her and her memory.
I don't want to give up my sadness. I don't want drugs to stop me from experiencing the full range of my feelings.
Please don't take any of this to mean that I'm saying that depression isn't real, or that drugs aren't important aids to many depressed folks. I'm talking sadness, not depression.
I wandered yesterday across a picture of my mother, sitting in a chair in the living room of the house she and Lloyd shared, her head covered by a stubble of hair growing back after her most recent cycle of chemo. I felt so much in the instant I saw that photo: fondness, love, joy at her survival, loss at her death, sadness.
I want all of those feelings. I want my heart to feel it's going to burst trying to contain all that I'm feeling. I never want to give them up, even if sometimes some of them hurt me to the core of my soul.
So, I'm going to keep on feeling sad sometimes, and feeling happy, and feeling lost, confused, in love, in fear, all of it. I want all of it.
Today would have been my mom's 83rd birthday. She died a bit over four years ago, on February 11, 2012. On this blog, I wrote about her death and the week following it. During the time from her death to her memorial service, I never cried. At the memorial service, I choked up several times, and a few tears hit my cheeks, but I didn't cry.
I still haven't cried for my mother.
It's not that I don't miss her. I do, terribly. It's also not that I didn't love her. I did, very much. I still do.
The problem is, I don't cry. The closest I come is to choke up, get a few tears, wipe them away, and move on. Many, many different things can cause me to reach that point, but nothing has taken me to full crying since I was eleven. At that time, when I was in the years of abuse, I vowed not to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing me cry, and I stopped crying. Period. Something that might make me cry enters me, my emotional shields automatically engage, and that's that.
I expect it might be healthier for me to cry, but at this point I don't know how.
A few weeks ago, I went to a superb Delta Rae concert at the Lincoln Theatre. As the band hit the first few notes of "Dance In the Graveyards," I realized that I had never danced with my mom. I immediately ached with that thought, and in the same moment my emotional shields snapped into place.
Leaning against a railing at the Lincoln, in the dark, friends around me but unable to see my face, alone with this tsunami of grief, I decided to try not to block the pain and instead to embrace how much I missed Mom, how much I wished I had danced with her. I pushed back the shields as much as I could, and I opened myself to the pain as much as I know how. I listened to the song, which I love, and I thought of Mom, whom I loved so much, and tears rolled down my cheeks. My self-defense systems fought me, and in the end they won, because I could not full-on cry, could not sob, could not let the grief control my body for even a second, but in that minute, at that concert, listening to that song, I shed more tears for Mom than ever before.
This quiet battle, which matters only to me, passed in the first minute of the song, and then I was myself again, listening to the music and aching for my mother, but distantly, as one does for an opportunity missed long ago.
I thought about that intense minute again today, on Mom's birthday, and I decided to write about it as a belated gift to her, one she cannot enjoy but that at least I have tried to send, a shout into the ether as pointless and yet as heartfelt as those tears.
What we do for people we love once they are gone cannot help them. I understand this so much better now than I did before Mom died. If you love people, let them know now, if you can, if you are better at expressing your love than I ever was with my mother, because once they die you will have only tears and pain, and neither will warm them in the cold nights when they wonder, as we all inevitably do, if they are loved.
I love you, Mom.
She died four years ago yesterday. I wasn't going to write about her this year, but a lot of things have combined to leave me thinking a great deal about her over the last few days.
She was a good woman, a smart, funny, tough woman who raised three kids and was for many years a single mother. She was a fighter who beat cancer three times.
Like all of us, she had her many flaws, and I use some of them in my comedy shows. Those bits always work.
Even when I use her as comic material, I love her. I never stopped loving her, though she always worried that I didn't, that somehow her failings had turned my heart against her. I never understood those feelings, but now I do, and I often feel similar fears about my own kids. I hope they're as irrational as hers.
I miss her. I always will.
One of Delta Rae's biggest hits, and a particular favorite of mine, is "Dancing in the Graveyards." As much as I like the song, I may love even more this video for it.
As the band did the first time I saw them live, they closed Saturday night's show with a rousing rendition of this tune. Watching them perform and listening raptly to the music, I thought of all the people I cared about who now are dead. Mom and Ed came quickly to mind, but many more immediately followed them. I would so very much like to see each of them again.
And so, each time I listen to this song, I think not only of how lovely it is, but also of those I've lost. We can all do worse than from time to time to pay tribute with our thoughts and love to those who have died before us. Someday, their memories, like the memories of all of humanity, will fade and vanish, but until that day, they are alive in our minds and hearts, and that is a wonderful way to honor them and to love them.
not only May Day, but also and more importantly to me, my mother's birthday. She died a bit over three years ago, but obviously I still think of her often and miss her.
As a small form of celebration, I thought I'd share, courtesy of Rana, two photos of my mother in my house.
The first is her many years ago.
on February 11, 2012, my mother died. I still miss her. I thought of her often today. A week never goes by without me thinking of her, and most days she passes through my mind.
My mom raised me and was a single mother for most of my life. She was a strong, fierce woman; never be fooled by a person's size--she never made it to five feet tall--into believing they are not powerful and formidable. She made a lot of mistakes with my childhood, and some of them left scars that will never fully heal, but she also did a great deal right.
She taught me many things. To protect with all my heart and energy those who are with me. To work hard. To be grateful for every blessing. Most of all, to fight, no matter the odds, no matter the difficulty, to fight and to never ever ever give up.
I have learned from her death that though we will all die one day, we will live on, at least for a time, in the hearts and memories of those we touched. Mom will in that way live for at least as long as I do, for she will never leave my heart or mind.
She told me she would always love me, and I believe she kept that promise. If there is a heaven, she is in it, and she is still loving me.
This song is about romantic love, and so in that sense it is not appropriate, but it is also about staying with those you love. Mom will always stay with me, and in my heart I will always stay with her.
Rest in peace, Mom.
For the first time in many, many years, we did not hold our annual fireworks show. I hope we can resume it soon, but this year it just wasn't workable.
Instead, a few folks ate burgers and dogs over here, and we kept it low-key.
I try always on this day to think about what it meant to those who wrote the Declaration of Independence. I often come down to this line and all that they truly were putting on the line:
...we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
I had a dream last night.
A ringing in the handset.
Mom answered, saying the name of a company
I once owned, many years ago.
"Mom?" I said, wonder in my voice
At the name so old and so far from her, nothing to do with her.
"Yes, dear," she said, as she always did,
The smirk cool water running over my fevered body.
I smiled--in the dream and in my bed,
And fought the waking as I felt my face move.
"It's all the same," she said, "always was.
Just you, something you're doing, me, us."
"Mom," I said again, louder in my head,
Maybe louder in my bed.
"It's okay, dear," she said. "I'm here.
I'm always here, but now I have to go."
"Mom," I said, the connection blank. I woke
And held the pillow tight and wished for one more dream against the night.
Mom died on Saturday, February 11, 2012. By day, that's a year ago yesterday. By date, it's a year ago tomorrow. In future years, I'll almost certainly think of it by the date, but because both feel significant to me now, I'm splitting the difference and writing about it today.
To no one's surprise, I still miss her. I have to assume--and hope, really--that I always do. She was my parent, the one constant in my youth. Whatever else she did wrong, she was always there.
What does surprise me is the way the pangs of loss hit me. I can now go a few days at a time without thinking about the fact that she is dead; that ability to forget and move on is natural and good. (I would have guessed a year ago that I'd heal faster. Shows what I know.) Most of the time, when the loss washes over me, it is mild, a pain slowly receding. Every now and then, though, in a conversation or sometimes completely unbidden by anything external, it will hit me like a punch to the stomach, a breath-stealing blow that leaves me stunned.
I know I no longer have a mother, but like a little kid, sometimes I just really, really, really wish I did.
A line that has run continuously through my head for the last few days and that I used in a small toast at dinner with friends last night, sums up the lesson I am currently trying to take from Mom's death.
Let us cherish those we love, for we will never have as much of them as we want.
I love this song (though this recording of it is terrible), have loved it since I first heard it, but it makes my heart ache. Warren Zevon recorded it when he knew he was dying. I miss his music. I miss Mom. I miss Ed. I miss so many we have lost.
For all of them, this song.
For all of them, I did, I do, and I will.
To say this past year has been mixed is to commit grievous understatement. Towering over it all is the death of my mother on February 11. Tonight is the last of the big holidays for me to celebrate without her, without our annual call and chitchat about nothing whatsoever.
Many grand things happened, of course, including the publication of my fifth--and best, so far--novel, No Going Back. As if to keep my ego in check, the world largely ignored the book, though I shouldn't complain in that it sold enough to keep me a hardback author (I think and hope).
I could go on and on with the year's ups and downs, but I haven't the heart right now. Instead, I'll go spend time with family and a few friends, think of Mom often, and resolve at midnight to do better next year on so many fronts.
As regular readers know, my mother died last February. As the year has worn on, I've experienced a lot of key events, such as my birthday, the family beach trip, and Thanksgiving, that are different for her passing.
Now, it's Christmas' turn.
Christmas was always a big deal when I was growing up. No matter how poor we were, it was the year's biggest blowout, with presents for all and a grand meal in the late afternoon. After Mom married Ed and we had more money, Christmas became even more extravagant. I've certainly carried that tradition into my life, as anyone who's been here at Christmas will attest.
Mom used to come to Christmas here occasionally, but she hadn't made the trip in recent years. She'd call, and if I missed her, I'd call back, often reluctantly. On more than one occasion, I got so busy with our Christmas that I forgot to call until the next day--an occurrence that frequently led her to call here first. Now, I'd give a lot to be able to make one of those calls.
She wasn't a big presence in my adult Christmases, but her uncanny ability to give truly amazingly bad presents (e.g., the James Bond wallet holster) made each package from her just a little more interesting for what oddness it might contain. She spent a lot of time shopping for those gifts, and she always preferred to finish before December or at least as early in December as possible. She liked stores and mail-order catalogs; Internet shopping was never her thing.
This coming Christmas, there will be no gifts from my mother under the tree.
There will be no call.
I know all this is natural and the way of the world, and most hours of most days, I don't think about it at all.
Sometimes, though, I feel the loss like a hard punch to the solar plexus that leaves me unable to breathe and waiting, waiting for the moment when air will rush back in and I will be okay again.
I received earlier today a package from my sister, Liza. In it was a very old glass paperweight, its glass clearly aged, its bottom devoid of the felt that a little kid had once glued to it. In the note that Liza sent with it, she commented,
As long as I can recall, Mom always had this [paperweight] by her computer in every home she lived in. I used to comment how precious a gift this was, and she'd smile with great love and satisfaction....The blond little boy in that photograph is smiling awkwardly. He appears to be four to six years old, though it's hard to tell. You try; click on the picture to see a larger version.
Today is Mom's birthday. Of course, I won't be celebrating it with her, because she died on February 11. I will, though, think about her throughout the day and miss her.
Though she lived in Florida and I am in North Carolina, she was at least virtually present, as one's parents often are, in all the usual days of celebration. This year, I'm having the first of each of those days without her, and I am finding them odd and sad.
On my birthday, for the first time in decades I did not receive a silly, sappy card telling me how glad she was that I was her son. She'd spend hours shopping for each of those cards, and I frequently mocked them, but I also knew deep down that she meant what they said.
In less than two weeks, we'll have a made-up holiday, Mother's Day, but I won't be able to call her.
The annual family beach holiday will roll by without her.
And so on.
It's been a long time since I had a father, but being without a mother is a relatively new experience.
I'm going to keep her in my head and in my heart on all of these of these dates. I'll probably whisper aloud a few words to her, not because she can hear them, but because I can. Words, perhaps, like these.
Happy birthday, Mom. I miss you. I love you.
One of the continuing unpleasant aspects of dealing with my mother's death is trying to close down her estate. As the executor, a role I agreed to fill, that job falls on me. I knew it would be a hassle, but I had no clue just how annoying it would be. In particular, I never considered the issue of junk mail.
It keeps coming, of course; the people who mail her have no idea she's dead. If I were dealing with my own mail, that would be only a slight time waster, because I know what letters I can simply discard. With Mom's mail, though, I have no easy way to tell what's real mail and what's not, so I have to open it all.
That's how I learned that even the dead can qualify for Smith Barney's most elite American Express credit card. I wonder if they'd appreciate an email suggestion that they rename it the American Express Zombie Card.
It's also how I learned that several different hospitals are worried that a heart attack is going to hit her and want her to sign up for seminars and programs to avoid that problem. Too late, guys.
Insurance companies are eager to offer her that extra level of protection that she will surely want in the future. Once again, folks, you're too late.
A couple of companies even think she needs a new car. We're passing on that.
More annoying than all of it, though, is the new junk mail that is coming to me with her name on it. Apparently, the funeral home wants to sell me some grief counseling. I never signed up for follow-on mailings, but I never thought to tell them not to contact me, either, so I suppose they're within their rights to solicit me. I would call them, but with my current mood I'm afraid of what I might say, so I'll save that particular task for some other time.
Yeah, best to put off that one.
As planned, we held it today at Mom's church, The First Baptist Church of St. Petersburg. The family reception started at 11:00 a.m., and for an hour we visited with many different people. Some were current friends, some were old friends, and others were folks I've never met. The common thread that tied us all was Mom. She touched a lot of lives. I'm proud of her for that.
The service included music Mom loved, courtesy of the choir and music director/pastor of worship, Greg Crane. Somewhere around 50 choir members came out to sing; Mom would have loved it.
Senior Pastor Walter Draughon, III ran the service and did an excellent job. I am not of any particular religious persuasion, but Mom was a devout Christian and member of this church. Walter conducted an excellent sermon that reflected Mom's respect for all religious beliefs. Walter struck me as a guy I would have enjoyed discussing religion with.
My sister, Liza, and I spoke as well. I delivered a tightened and somewhat reworked version of the blog entry I posted last Saturday, and it was rough going. I teared up way more than I had hoped I would.
Afterward, friends in the church supplied food, and many people ate and socialized more. I visited with people, but I just didn't want to eat, not then.
My brother, Martin, then took me to the airport. It was great to get to spend time with him and his family this past week, though obviously I wish the circumstances had been different.
After a long time and two delays at the airport, we flew home.
When I landed, I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere, but that feeling will pass. My normal life will resume. I'll have to conclude Mom's financial affairs, a process sure to be more annoying and lengthier than I would like. As I drive to work, I'll probably start to call her and remember I can't, and that will hurt. A lot will hurt, but less with time.
I won't stop missing or loving her, though, nor should I. Nor will those many other people who came today, nor the many who knew her and cared for her and could not attend.
All of this is as it always is and always has been with the death of someone you love, as natural a part of life as eating and sleeping, but that knowledge does not, right now, make it any easier.
I'm going to stop writing about Mom's death, at least for a while, because I need to deal with my life, with the overdue book, with all the people I care about.
But, wow, do I miss her, and wow, do I wish that just one more time I could tell her...
...I love you, Mom.
For most of the part of my childhood that I can remember, I didn't have a dad. Ed, whom Mom married when I was sixteen or so, arrived too late to ever really be my father.
Mom was my only parent.
And now she's gone.
In my family, the generational clock just ticked forward a notch. I have no parents, no grandparents; I am the senior one of my generation.
I can't honestly remember the last time I consulted Mom for advice, but it was always nice to know that she was there. I took her for granted in the way that we always do our parents; they're fixtures in our lives, people we can count on.
And now she's gone.
Tonight, I am very sad. I expect I will be sad off and on for some time. Life will resume its normal pace. I'll think of her and talk of her, and most of the time it'll be with laughter and love and the occasional "you know Mom" shake of the head, but sometimes it'll be with sadness, because I won't be able to call her the next day.
Tonight, though, it's almost all sadness. As awkward as hugging her always felt, I sure wish I had done it more.
Hug your parents while you can. It ought to be a rule somewhere.
I know there's so much funny and loving and good and frustrating and silly and powerful and just plain boring stuff to remember about her, as there is about each of us, but I can't get to those things right now. I can feel only the sadness.
I suppose that's natural and healthy, but it sure does suck.
Damn, Mom, I miss you.
Posts
All Comments
